creation rebirth
by agavrik
Summary: she caves in her own chest and gouges out a beating heart for them, hoping that it is enough. (because they need each other, she whispers) sasusaku, and why it is easier to create than destroy.
1. of death

When Uzumaki Naruto and Uchiha Sasuke of Team 7 unite, there are one thousand screaming birds and a shattered friendship between them. Haruno Sakura watches this meeting with an empty heart and her sensei's screams next to her, because she knows that there is no room for her in the space that separates them.

" _No_ —" Kakashi lunges from next to her, a perpetually tragic figure with a speed that is almost-enough and eyes that cannot forget what he sees for the rest of his life. Kusanagi enters Naruto's chest almost directly through his heart, shattering his ribs and electrocuting his organs and devastating the body of a boy who has given up living for his friend.

Because, Sakura realizes numbly with the death-cry of the lightning in her mind, Naruto has pulled his rasengan just enough to leave Sasuke alive.

The Uchiha has fallen, a blue-white-red figure that is smaller than the mountains that she is learning to break, so small that she wonders how he has lived with a tragedy around every corner of his life. He is the constant that has driven Team Seven, more than Naruto and his _dattebayo!_ s and Kakashi and his crinkling eyes and Sakura and her _Sasuke-kun_ s and _Naruto-baka_ s. Sasuke has dragged them straight through hell and into purgatory, which is more placid than Sakura could ever have imagined.

Because, she thinks, stepping forward quietly, Naruto's death and Sasuke's murdering occurs while both are silent, snarls on their faces and defeat in their silhouettes. Tragedies are unavoidable, says Sasuke's blood-tears and Naruto's glassy eyes. Tragedies are their turning points, their futures, and their realizations. There is no doubt in Sakura's mind that this is a pivotal moment in Konohagakure's history, that this is the action that will change Sasuke and make him a forlorn hero who will spend the rest of his life attempting to atone for the killing of his best friend.

It's fate, she knows. It is meant to be. It is destiny, it is the path to the future, and it is something that should not be undone. But then again, she is Haruno Sakura and they are Uzumaki Naruto and Uchiha Sasuke and _she is a medic-nin_.

She will not let them be _tragedies_.

" _Fuck it_ ," she snarls, and her arms light up in glowing-green chakra that can burn up a forest if she wished it to. She is at the the side of her teammates a second later, shoving Kakashi and his tear-stained face away from her deathbed.

He doesn't protest, just moving quietly aside and covering red-and-black eyes with trembling hands. He thinks he's failed, she thinks, a sort of savagery in her throat. He think's he has let down his students, that he has not done his duty as their sensei. That it is his fault that Naruto's heart is damaged beyond repair and Sasuke is boy who has done this.

"Watch me, sensei," she says aloud, rough voice and steady hands and pink hair with jagged ends that does not flow in the wind. " _Watch me._ "

She doesn't turn to see whether or not he is looking at her, though, because she is a med-nin first and foremost and her duty is always first to her patients. Instead she tears apart Naruto's vest and runs her hands down his skin, mentally calculating how many seconds it has been since his heart has stopped working and how many seconds she has left before he goes brain dead.

Two minutes since being skewered by Kusanagi. One minute since his heart most likely stopped pumping blood to his brain cells. She has between another two to four minutes before his cells go dead.

She can replace it in one minute and twenty-five seconds, according to her trial runs with Tsunade-shishou.

Sakura takes in a breathe, and concentrates her own chakra down to her heart, shaping into an organ that is ready to synthetically beat blood through her own body in the place of the real thing. She has read both Sasuke and Naruto's medical files extensively since becoming the Godaime's apprentice, and has had her own blood type tested. She's an O-positive, meaning she can donate to either of them.

Twenty seconds after concentrating on her chakra flow and slowly solidifying it into an exact replica of her own heart, she places a steady hand back on Naruto's chest and pumps a single wave into his heart.

It takes her thirty seconds to memorize, with her chakra-enhanced visual, the exact size and of his own heart and the antigens that coat it. No two people in the world have the exact tissue-types, unless they are twins, but Sakura is a medic with chakra control that is as god-tier as her shishou's.

Even if few know of it.

"Yin-seal: _Release_ ," she whispers, hands blurring through the hand signs. The diamond on her forehead pulses, not yet filled completely with chakra. But Sakura doesn't have another year to wait until she reaches full power, because Naruto is dying in front of her _right now_. So she slams her palms together and roars " _Ninja Art: Mitotic Regeneration_ ," and finally feels Kakashi's gaze, wondrous and hopeful and looking straight at her.

Green-eyes lit up with chakra and teenage hands that do not falter, she caves in her own chest and wraps her fingers around her heart, tearing it out while it still pumps blood and feeling her chakra take its place. She doesn't have enough to regrow one, but it is enough to keep her alive for another thirty seconds.

Sakura deconstructs her still-beating heart and builds it into an pseudo-version of Naruto's, reconstructing tissue and turning DNA upside down and using chakra as a scalpel that both shapes and nurtures it.

Her shishou _would be proud_.

As it is, she can only know that Kakashi is watching her, something dawning on him and crushing the hope of a bright future within him.

"Sakura," he says, voice hoarse and filled with dread. " _You don't have to do this._ "

 _But yes,_ she thinks. _She does have to do it_. She can let Naruto die, let him drown in his own blood and his mistake of trusting Sasuke and caring for his teammate and believing in friendship and watch the Uchiha become the epitome of a changed man, but she won't. Because she is Haruno Sakura, she is a med-nin, and med-nin let no one die but themselves.

( _Did you know, Sakura,_ her shishou had told her once. _That medics have a higher death rate than field-shinobi during wartimes?_ Sakura had stared back. _No, shishou,_ she had shaken her head, mystified. She asked why, and Tsunade told her about healer-hearts that were weary of seeing patients die but were too young to master jutsus that they couldn't handle, healer-hearts that wore themselves out with chakra exhaustion and failed organ transplants that involved martyric donors. Sakura didn't understand how that could be possible; at the time, she had still been Sakura-chan who stayed behind her teammates and watched them run headlong into danger with their deaths straight in front of them and her life safe at their backs. But now, _she knew_. Now she knew what it meant to be a _healer_.)

So Sakura does not reply to her sensei, instead plunging her hand into Naruto's chest with a cry and so much care that she minimizes the damage to the surrounding bones and organs and pulls it out as fast as Sasuke had lunged towards her with his chidori lighting up his arm. The chakra from her seal rushes into the wound and repairs the tissue-tears and lightning-burns, extracting fluids and causing new cells to bloom in their place. His marrow begins to work overtime, producing blood fast enough to replace the gallons that he has lost.

Her heart goes into his chest next, and she seals up loose nerve endings and blood vessels and connects tubes and builds him a new body. A wave of dizziness almost overcomes her, and she realizes that she has only 10 seconds of time and chakra left to fix up a boy who needs her to open his royal-blue eyes.

Her seal pulses for the last time, giving her enough chakra to have her fake-heart last long enough for her to pound her hands one last time on his chest.

"Live," is the single word she says when the almost the last of her chakra fades into his body and his spinal cord is recreated, with three seconds of her record time left to spare.

Her hands go to Sasuke-kun next, who lies close enough to Naruto that she needs to only turn and reach to touch his bruise-covered skin. One touch, one pulse of chakra, and she restores him halfway to his pre-battle condition.

 _Sasuke-kun_ , she thinks, a bit of grief in her mind because she finds scars on his skin that she does not know and yet erases before her vision blackens and her heart is gone. She wants, for a second, to see him wake and see his teammates around his body with tears in their eyes and arms ready to embrace him. She wants to see him grow, she thinks, into someone who is no longer torn apart by grief or turned into a being that will only hate themself once they heal. And Sakura is _terrified_ in this moment, in this point of no-return that has her facing _a void called death_ and _an end that she is too young for._

But then arms are around her shoulders, a _please_ —on Kakashi's lips and a dawning horror in both his eyes, and she knows she has to be strong for Team Seven. So when she reaches a trembling arm up and touches his mask, she does it with a quirk of her lips and dry-eyes that scream in silence.

 _Let them smile again,_ she thinks to her sensei. _Let them free themselves from grief._

Sharingan tears, a nod, and the feel of warm lips on her forehead are the last things that Sakura knows of this world.

* * *

 _A/N Part 2 coming soon._ _(ง'̀-'́)ง Review & like please to motivate my lazy ass into gear (or to mention typos, because my vision blurs after writing for hours and then reading through these things)_

 _Edited 11/19/15 for spelling errors and etc._

 _UPDATE TIME: I'm aiming for in 4 days (by the start of this coming Monday) because then I'll have a weekend to rev myself up with cool sad electronic music (^,:_


	2. and of a future

There's blackness and aching bones and stinging flesh and something slightly wet on his face when Sasuke awakens, sunlight hitting his eyes as he opens them and reminding him that there is a world he must face after every decision he makes. Blood has soaked through his clothes and situated itself on top of his skin, sweat and dirt and something that tastes like salt streaking across his cheeks.

The forest is silent.

Sasuke, for all his exceptionally honed senses, cannot hear the birds chirping. The leaves are silent and still, the animals are gone, and he does not know why he is here.

And then he remembers.

Sasuke draws himself up on shaky feet and trembling arms and finds his vision blurry, half with tears and half with strain from the Mangekyou. Because _he remembers_.

He had sprinted, he realizes, all killer intent and red eyes and lightning skin and _Uchiha hatred_ at a boy with chakra that had blazed up as bright as the sun and concentrated itself into a single ball of swirling _power_ in his hands. A boy with whisker cheeks and anguished eyes and cobalt-blue eyes that were _screaming_ at him, screaming _who are you_ and _who are you_ and _who_ —

Sasuke had replied,

 _I am an Uchiha._

There was no time for Naruto to ask him what happened, to ask him where the boy who scoffed and glowered and delicately handled bowls of ramen from their childhood had gone. There was no time for him to ask Sasuke if he knew that he would always be a part of Team Seven, that he would always be their teammate, that _he would always be Naruto's best friend_.

Sasuke thought he would feel numb, he swore himself to vengeance and killing and murder and senseless pain because he thought he would feel numb _he thought he would feel numb_ —

Sasuke staggers, heat in his throat and a dull throbbing in his head and his _heart_ and there is terror crawling up his spine, unfurling cold fingers and creeping towards his neck and making his lungs constrict because, _kami_ , if Sasuke was alive and standing and the world was gouged with craters and there was destruction in the air and _Sasuke_ was standing then, he thinks, then, he gasps, _Naruto was dead_.

For a moment, Sasuke is still. The forest is quiet. He thinks over the trajectories of their hits, pieces together the fragments of their paths towards each other, and realizes the exact position where he will find Naruto's body.

Sasuke turns with half-faded eyes, and looks upon the tragedy he has wrought upon Konohagakure. Through a haze of pain and blurry shapes, he feels dull surprise.

He can barely see the green of the trees in front of him, or know exactly how much earth the combination of a chidori and rasengan can tear up, but he can just make out the features a single person facing him. His ex-sensei, Hatake Kakashi, son of the White Fang and the man who had taught him how to kill his best friend, is a hunched over figure that looks up at him with dead eyes.

"Sasuke," he says, mask barely moving, and then he stands slowly and walks towards the Uchiha with weariness.

In the back of Sasuke's mind, there is a clan instinct that screams _danger_ and _killhimkillhim_ and _youaresosoweak_ because he is standing still, not moving as the Konoha nin approaches him steadily. Because for all the pain on his face and in the blood that covers his hands, Kakashi does not falter in his path. He is at his student's side in a moment, his hand reaching up to become a heavy weight on Sasuke's shoulder that reminds him of the flicks of his forehead that—

 _NononoNONONONONONO_ his mind screams, and Sasuke is immediately pulled back into the reality that is facing him. He isn't ready, he realizes somewhere in the back of his head, to remember _everything_.

So Sasuke steps forward and lets his ex-sensei's hand fall off his shoulder, instead focusing on the direction that Kakashi wordlessly tilted his head towards. His walk is slow and cautious and edged with fear until he is close enough to see _two_ bodies—

Sasuke stops, spine straightening and heartbeat intensifying and finally realizing that—

 _Something is wrong._

His head throbs harder and his visions blurs more for a split second. He can feel the twisted air in front of him, he can taste something bitter and knows, knows he _knows_ that there is something _wrong._ And it is not Naruto's death.

Sasuke stares, half paused and in disbelief and half just unable to comprehend the fact that there are two bodies side by side and one of them has pink hair and a hole in its chest.

One of them is Sakura, one of them is Naruto.

"What—" he pauses, half ready to ask Kakashi to explain how how _how_ Sakura's body is here and why is Naruto safe and alive and why is Sakura here? And also—where is her heart?

But there's silence at his back and horror at his front, and Sasuke finds himself on his knees between his two comrades. He touches the torn fabric at Naruto's front first, feeling dull wonder in his chest at the disappearance of scars and healing of skin that should have been torn apart and burned and ravaged by lightning _not to mention a heart_ that should have been obliterated. Because Sasuke knows he made contact, he knows he felt warm blood and a beating organ and a gasp of blood that splattered across his cheeks and _he knows he tasted his best friend's blood_.

But the boy in front of him is whole. And the girl next to him is not.

Sasuke is almost afraid to touch Sakura, afraid of her tears and her _Sasuke-kun_ s and her ability to guilt him like no other. He does not touch her at first, instead gazing down at the visceral remains of her upper torso and the protruding of her ribs and the gory glimpse of her lack-of-a-heart.

Sasuke looks up at a blurry black figure that he knows is looking back at him.

"I don't understand," he says a second after he places his hand at the side of Sakura's neck. There is no pulse, and he knows _he knows_ that there can't be one without a heart but how can _Sakura_ be missing a heart when she hadn't even been there? She had never been there, not when his parents were murdered and not when he felt tears drip down his cheeks and not when he swallowed sobs and buried melancholiness and beat his anger into training sessions and _she had never been there_ but Naruto had, Naruto had been there with sparkling eyes and common-sense fists and a will that matched his so how could this be, how could _Sakura_ be the one in front of him like this?

Kakashi is in front of him, then, and his ex-sensei looks at him with black red eyes and acceptance and a little bit of pity and a whole lot of _I'm sorry_ and does not look away once.

"She had become a medic-nin, Sasuke. The protege of the Fifth Hokage."

When it clicks in his mind, he can only think, _oh_.

Oh. _Oh._

 _Kami, this can't be_ —

Sasuke turns back to her body and presses his fingers into the hollows of her neck and feels how cold it is, he pushes them into her flesh and stares at the eyelids that should be open and filled with green and he says, he lies, he denies—

"I don't understand, I don't understand _I don't understand_ —" he buries his hands in her hair and feels more blood on his hands and he is snarling his words, he is screaming his lies and begging his sensei and _looking at Sakura_.

 _Why?_ he wants to know, he wants her to wake up so he can shake her dove-thin shoulders and hold her bony wrists and round cheeks and let her hug him just this once, he wants to ask her _why did you give up your heart?_ but Sasuke knows, he knows he knows he knows that he can cry into her skin and taste salt and coppery blood and shout at the heavens and beg for forgiveness but in the end, it is Kakashi who answers.

"She couldn't have saved you alone, Sasuke. She knew that, and she chose not to let you go."

Sasuke clutches Sakura's body and feels her blood soak through his clothes and run down his skin and mark him with forgiveness, whispering her name into her skin like he will never let her be forgotten. He will hold her name in his mouth until he dies, he will carve it into history and mark himself with it and he will say it when Naruto, inevitably, wakes up to find _Sakura-chan_ and begins to scream in his own cacophony of anguish and _he will not forget how much he would have loved her._

Sasuke says this with certainty.

Sakura will not be forgotten.

* * *

 _A/N hi it's me and i'm back and i'm once again in tears because i get v happy when i see reviewers telling me i made them cry, not because i'm a jerk but because i want to convey a lot of emotion and whenever i found out my efforts came through i feel amazed and exuberant/_

 _Kelly: ! when i saw you i almost shouted omg because you're in guest mode and you still were looking out for me to publish a second work ahhhh i felt so happy when i saw your comment_

 _everyone who will most likely drag me for this ending: I HATE TRAGEDIES IM A BIG WUSS AND I HATE IT BUT BUT BUT THIS IS AN AU in which i address the closeness of naruto and sasuke vs. the closeness of sakura and sasuke and try my best to explain how i've always felt that Sakura has felt slightly hurt about her relationship with the rest of Team 7 because she knows that she isn't as close to them as they are to each other, no matter how much she wants to be, but when it comes down to it she will quite literally give up her heart for them to be safe & secure & free to find happiness (because honestly sasuke as a character is super dependent on Naruto, at least i've always thought so, so he wouldn't be able to have a healthier relationship with others without making up with naruto first yaknow) _

_\- angst loving author out! (also i met my own damn deadline, but at the cost of two hours of my sleep (^': haha/cries)_

UPDATE 11/23/15: _I FORGOT TO SET IT AS COMPLETE I'm so sorry for playing all of you by accident but this was supposed to be a two-shot and it is a two-shot now and I swear this is only my second time trying to figure out all these publish buttons and I forgot about the story status feel free to drag me but I'm so so sorry_

 _If it makes anyone feel better, I've been thinking about an huge Itachi-centered story for over a year now (probably involving an OC? (;) and I also have a lot of ideas for an actual sasusaku fic w/o (too much/nervous laughter) angst or tragedy it's just that I'm trying to fix my tendency to become squeamish when writing scenes involving physical closeness bc my laptop is too close to the living room for safety..._


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